October 30, 2023
4.5 billion year old space rock tells us new things about Solar System
The State of Gilead
Roe v. Wade Is Gone, but Abortions Are On the Rise [ungated] - "New abortion bans have done little to reduce frequency of the procedure, new data show." [more inside]
"claw-claw..."
"Protecting cats has been a Roman tradition since the days of the ancient Roman Republic. They were considered sacred to the goddess Diana and were kept not only as companions, but as a way to control the pest population as the city grew. Cats were granted legal protections under Roman law as early as the first century CE .
The Roman Cat. pt.1, pt. 2, pt. 3.
previously.
Cinematic Fig Leaf
"NO CGI" is really just "INVISIBLE CGI" [SLYT] This VFX artist rigorously examines the oft-repeated claim that a movie has no CGI or is all practical. As he puts it, why are their 400 VFX artists in the credits then? [more inside]
What Bit the Ancient Egyptians?
"How much can the written records of ancient civilisations tell us about the animals they lived alongside? Our latest research, based on the venomous snakes described in an ancient Egyptian papyrus, suggests more than you might think. A much more diverse range of snakes than we’d imagined lived in the land of the pharaohs – which also explains why these Egyptian authors were so preoccupied with treating snakebites!" [more inside]
We need fact crusaders
Fact-checking can be nuanced, and every misstatement is not an intentional lie. But many of the lies we see today are obvious. Journalists need to call them out prominently, not just in the 14th paragraph of a story. People read headlines. So journalists must put corrections in headlines. Instead of writing a story headlined “Trump says UAW talks don't matter because EV shift will kill jobs,” news outlets should write stories headlined “Trump lies about electric vehicles during speech to auto workers.” This type of headline would not be a cheap shot. Trump’s September speech to non-unionized auto workers was stuffed with lies. From the October 30, 2023 issue of Stop the Presses newsletter by Mark Jacob, former metro editor of the Chicago Tribune and former Sunday editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. [more inside]
"A similar purpose when they cook: to keep their heritage alive."
"There is no singular Palestinian cuisine. Palestinian food spans our entire geography, from the mountains of the Galilee to the valleys of the south, from the coast of Yaffa all the way to the West Bank." [more inside]
The little guys show up in medieval marginalia hunting mice & being cute
First of all, I would like to ask which “religious leaders” this cat account thinks condemned cats in the fourteenth century. You would see some kind of documentation, because a mass cull of cats would represent a huge 180 from standard medieval practice surrounding the animals, because medieval people fucking loved cats.
"America does not deserve me."
Why so many Black Americans are moving abroad. (slLATimes)
A challenge to the idea of writing such stories at all
Modern forms of true crime aren’t just cynical entertainments: they also suffer from a form of epistemological hubris, reassuring us that though the crimes they document are unspeakable, they are, in the final accounting, explicable. And if they are explicable, it follows that they are avoidable. from Accessory After the Fact, a review of Mark O'Connell's A Thread of Violence [The Baffler; ungated]
“I could just break into tears, the human he’s become.”
"The evolution of Steve Albini", a Grauniad long read about a punk rock personality who is growing past his edgelord youth. Many previouslies, including another post on being offensive, but also Christmas, punk rock ethics, food, the music industry, producing 'In Utero', being pompous, producing records, being offensive (yes, it's a theme), selling out, beautiful sunrises, answering questions, and an even older post with mostly broken links. [more inside]
A Little Moxie For Halloween
Penn Jillette's kid Moxie did some magic and tried to fool their dad on "Penn & Teller:Fool Us" (SLYT) [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »